ESP Releases ‘Overseas’ Bootleg Recording

In 2008, following the release of their debut album, One For The Ditch, Easton Stagger Phillips embarked on a European Tour. In order to maximize creativity during their time together, Easton brought along his portable recording studio-AKA a laptop and a Mojave microphone-and began recording the songs and White Album-esque snippets that were intended to be the bedrock for a second album.

Each member of ESP had new songs on deck and there was one -“The Road”- that was the trio’s first co-write (having been composed backstage at Paradiso in Amsterdam). Recording sessions were done wherever and whenever the band found time and space – a frigid sitting room in Dublin, a laundry room and apartment right on the Damrak in Amsterdam, a friend’s basement in Germany, and a hippodrome in southern Holland.

After the tour, Easton took the rough mixes to his studio in Joshua Tree where he added a few flourishes, built a few more sound collages, and sequenced a project he called Overseas. Soon thereafter, Phillips began physical therapy for a climbing injury and the boys put everything on hold. When the band re-surfaced 5 years later to make Resolution Road, they decided to start from scratch.